LifeOmic is planning to build new headquarters at the Indiana University Emerging Technology Center.
LifeOmic, a one-year-old healthcare informatics company, is planning to build new headquarters at the Indiana University Emerging Technology Center. In addition, it has indicated it plans to hire 225 staffers over the next five years with an average salary of $75 per hour, or $156,000 per year.
LifeOmic was founded by Indianapolis entrepreneur Don Brown. Brown is the founder of Software Artistry and Interactive Intelligence. LifeOmic offers cloud-based storage systems for healthcare stakeholders to store and manage health information—although it allows for more complex data than just electronic health records, including whole genome sequences and large-scale data sets for proteomics, metabolomics, transcriptomics and others. LifeOmic has two primary products and services. One is sequencing a patient’s genome. The other is the cloud-based storage service.
Brown sold Interactive Intelligence in 2016 to California-based Genesys Telecommunication Laboratories for $1.4 billion. Interactive made software for call centers. The jump from straight software to medical-based IT isn’t that big a leap for Brown. In addition to his software background, he earned a medical degree from Indiana University School of Medicine in 1985 and is wrapping up a master’s degree in biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University this month.
The company is looking for $9.1 million in tax breaks and incentives. The Indiana Economic Development Corp. has granted the company more than $7.75 million in conditional tax credits and up to $600,000 in training grants. The incentives are based on LifeOmic meeting specific employment and hiring goals.
The Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development has also recommended the company receive a 10-year partial tax abatement on $16 million in infotech infrastructure that the company plans to buy for the facility it will be leasing. The facility is 41,640 square feet at 351 W. 10th Street, near the Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) campus.
State filings show the company expects to employ 42 people by 2018, 72 by 2019, 122 by 2020, 172 by 2021 and 232 by 2022. The company would be expected to pay about $1 million in personal property taxes over the period of the tax incentives, as well as an estimated $125,400 annually after the abatement period.
In September, LifeOmic inked a collaboration deal with Indiana University and the Regenstrief Institute to develop precision medicine. Precision medicine, sometimes called personalized medicine, refers to using knowledge of an individual’s genome to personalize treatments. Under the deal, LifeOmic receives a blanket license to a variety of both institution’s intellectual property in addition to access to faculty. IU and Regenstrief will receive a minority equity position in LifeOmic.
“Indiana University’s expertise in precision health research, combined with the Regenstrief Institute’s long history of innovation in medical records data and LifeOmic’s impressive capabilities in genomic data storage and management, make for a powerful partnership that will help our institutions collaborate to improve health in Indiana and Beyond,” said IU President Michael McRobbie,in a statement. “We look forward to seeing the discoveries that will stem from this alliance of academia and industry.”
